Meadowhawk

Ruby Meadowhawk. Please click to enlarge.

I went looking for summer

and he obliged

suspending his patrol for rivals

to land on a knuckle

and let me admire him

his geometry and efficiency

his astonishing eyes, his gorgeous scarlet abdomen,

the wondrous organic complexity of his mechanisms

worthy of a lifetime's study that would result

in knowledge only superficial.

And later over the field i see his kind flaring

in low sunlight as they hunt above goldenrod

marvelously primitive, beautifully complex, lethal.

Love is a meadowhawk.